The Fourth Place

I just finished reading Atlas Shrugged interspersed with the first few chapters of Jamie Whytes Bad Thoughts, which is another book that is already coming in useful.

I loved Atlas Shrugged. Probably this means I’m both mad and an ass hole by the reckoning of most people, but never mind. I’m not going to be put off because a book and an author I admire is disliked by lots of other people, this is an appeal to the authority of the people, not even to experts, and rests neither on logic or on facts. If I’m to desist from admiring Ayn Rand it will be because she’s wrong and for no other reason.

Trying to follow up a reading of Atlas Shrugged by conscientiously googling for Ayn’s Rand  critics is a painful experience. There is so much garbage said about the book. I’ve identified some broad categories of criticism:

1. She’s wrong – without any justification – often the critic admits to having not actually read the book or only skimmed it, and gets details wrong.
2. She’s wrong due to some X, where X is an argument adequately discussed in the pages of Atlas Shrugged. Inherited wealth for example, is dealt with in a speech by Francisco d’Anconia. Or the criticism that to survive we all draw from society the means of our survival – this is exactly the premise of the book, she is mostly having a go at the destruction of those means by the moochers and enslavers who do not draw out those means in exchange for some value.
3. She’s wrong due to some Y which she forgot to mention, but its actually easy to guess what she’d say. A Y might be old people, there is Hank Rearden’s mother in the book, who is looked after despite giving nothing, including love, to her son and Hank is described as wrong for doing so. I’d guess that a different Mrs Rearden that did offer some value to her son, say Wisdom, should indeed be looked after as there is something in that for all parties. Children came up as well, but there is loads about children and childhood in the book. Somebody wasn’t paying attention.
4. She’s wrong because some  Z is implausible and essential, where Z is a prop in the book that is not necessary to the plot or which is easily replaced by something more plausible. A motor powering a whole town by converting static electricity in the air, is no different from a town powered by a hydroelectric power plant. In fact, anything remotely technological, would have done since the point she was making is that its the mind that powers civilisation – try replacing that. Sheep farming and candles made of animal fat, would actually have enhanced the plot value of the valley – since both require a mind -  but would have been inconsistent with the valley as it would be near to the end of the strike.
5. She’s wrong or the book is bad because thing N in the book is clearly wrong, but N is not in the book. A strawman argument. A country could not be and isn’t powered by a handful of intellectual elites say the critics, but this is not described in the book. The book describes a spectrum of secretaries, dispatchers, foremen, engineers, industrialists and inventors with different levels of talent and a tactically selected few hundred of the most talented go on strike in the valley, hundreds of thousands strike in other ways both before and after the pivotal speech by Galt telling them to strike. Somebody wasn’t paying attention.
6. Her book is M where M is a feature of books normally held to be bad, long boring, having 2D characters etc fair enough I guess!

I enjoyed the book because it granted me a sanction to discard contradictory moralities, and encouraged me to value that which is an achievement and to take joy in achievements around me, including competence in people. Since I live in London suddenly there was a lot to take joy in, I was giddy for days even as I continued to finish the book.  I found it useful because it enumerated some virtues – reason, courage, honesty, pride, productivity – which I went straight ahead to use as a check list to evaluate those around me – which lead to some useful observations about some people in my life.

For all that, however, the book is in fact rather too long and boring on account of repeating itself a bit too much. Some of the characters are a bit flat e.g. Wesley Mouch, Eugene Lawson, John Galt but developing them in more depth would only serve to make the book longer. I guess its a matter of what you value, if you want a fun read this is not the book, try Pratchett, but if you value the philosophical content as well then there it is.

Then there is this overlap between the philosophy and the plot of the book which is hard to separate and works both ways. I believe Ayn Rand has compromised the expression of her philosophy for the plot of the book, which necessarily has a focus on striking, but I don’t think she is actually advocating going on strike for real. In the other direction, the critics can of course say stuff like the characters acted as a collective set of strikers or the hidden valley is a communist utopia, and use that as evidence of a contradiction in the philosophy.

I need to be careful as well.  If I’m to use this philosophy to some extent to make decisions then I must know it accurately – living according to a plot device is stupid. This is why some non-fiction Objectivist material is on my wish list. Living by a creed is widely recognised as useful and is widespread practice that helps a lot of people to make decisions and live better – I’ve seen that with my own eyes. Usually the creed is irrational and its dignified by the term “religion”, strangely I can’t think of a similar word for rational creeds so that’ll do.

So  yeah I might be about to be sucked into the Objectivist “religion” and become a complete ass by most people’s definition – perhaps that’s not even new – but if I do it’ll be because its right. I won’t be describing myself as Objectivist any time soon, not until I’ve read a lot more about it and heard from competent critics. So far I have no reason to suspect its wrong, but there is no need to hurry.

Today, I sat down on the tube next to a gentleman on my left and leaving space for an approaching lady to sit to my right. Eventually the lady sat down one seat away on the right so I had her, the gentlemen and a three ladies in front of me and to the left of the gentleman, the rest of the carriage was mostly empty but as the train drew away everyone seemed comfortable and there was no atmosphere.

What happened next was very interesting, but first you must understand that I hadn’t actually showered so I could understand if somebody decided I was a bit stinky. Though the gentleman directly on the left seemed entirely tolerant of my existence, as was everyone else.

Then, I reached into my bag and got a book out.

I had two books, on software and religion, but I chose to read the book on religion, which espouses a point of view with which I am somewhat sympathetic. Though I admit, some aspects of some religions make me uncomfortable I have never really proselytised my own views and try to be tolerant and express an interest in other belief systems and the cultures that go with them. I don’t often think about the topic, and am certainly not a religious practitioner, so this is probably the first time I’ve read a book on religion in public.

So what happened? Well a few seconds after I opened the book, the lady one seat away to the right, who certainly did have the option to sit further away earlier on, decided to stand up and move down about one third the length of the carriage. I instantly suspected I was smelly, or had burped or sniffed in a disgusting way, but looking around I saw the confused faces of the other passengers in this little cluster and they all seemed sufficiently surprised to rule that out. The next thing I thought of was the book and as soon as I started examining the back cover – necessarily exposing the front cover – the other faces become less confused, and returned to their own business. Had the book, who’s title was visible on the back cover, made this woman move away? Wow!

I can’t think of any other reasons why this lady would have moved away, and the fact that she had brown skin and my skin and the skin of the author are both white reinforces the reason somewhat since religion often divides – I believe – along the lines of skin colour. So yes, it probably was the book. Er… Wow!

I’m a white male living in 2008 in a polyglot and cosmopolitan city where the traditional culture matches my own cultural upbringing. The historic cultural backdrop of London matches the Christian cultural backdrop I was bought up in. Why should an atheist with such a background experience such extreme religious intolerance simply for reading Richard Dawkins? The book has a scientific slant on the topic and neither science or atheism were – I thought – especially uncommon in London.

Wow… simply moving away demonstrates a high level of intolerance. I would generally define intolerance as murder and arson, and I am neither murdered nor burnt from my home, but on a relative scale this was somewhat more than the none at all I’m used to or the nearly none I feel for others. Yet putting tolerance aside, isn’t it pretty closed minded to assume that a book that is opposed to the existence of God is necessarily intolerable? and that a person reading an intolerable book is himself intolerable? Jesus Christ!